Republican presidential candidate discusses US war against Russia

Ben Carson during a speech in Baltimore, Maryland on May 7, 2015. (AFP Photo)

A 2016 Republican presidential candidate has declared that a US military attack against Russia would be possible in the future in order to protect the American people.

“If the interest and the existence and the safety of the people of the United States was at stake – and that was the only way to protect them – of course, I would do whatever was necessary,” Ben Carson said in an interview with Fox News on Sunday when asked about the use of military force against Moscow.

“I would, obviously, do that in consultation with very competent generals and people who are more knowledgeable in that area than I would be,” he added.

The retired neurosurgeon, who launched his presidential bid last week, also called Russian President Vladimir Putin a bully.

Carson, however, rejected going to war with Russia over the Ukraine crisis.

“No, I wouldn’t go to war over Ukraine. But I would handle Ukraine in a very different way,” he said.

“It was agreed that they would be protected if something happened with aggression. Have we lived up to that? Of course we have not. And what does that say to our other allies around the world?” he asked.

Carson is a former director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions.

Relations between Washington and Moscow deteriorated last year after pro-Western forces ousted Ukraine’s former president Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014.

The US accuses Russia of providing heavy weaponry and training pro-Russian fighters and of deploying air defense systems in eastern Ukraine. The Kremlin denounces the accusations as baseless.

During a speech on Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the United States of attempting to dominate the world.

“We have seen attempts to create a unipolar world, we see gaining momentum as a force of bloc thinking,” Putin told foreign leaders, war veterans, and thousands of soldiers assembled on Moscow’s Red Square ahead of a major military parade.